2 - The Crown I Will Take From You
Episode 2
Chapter 1.
Someone was shaking her.
“Are you awake, Your Highness?”
Medeia blinked. Her face was like a blank sheet of paper, as if someone had absorbed all her expressions.
The Maid shuddered, taken aback by her doll-like appearance, devoid of vitality.
“Your Highness? Are you listening to me?”
A figure was reflected in the mirror placed on the table.
Brightly shining green eyes. A neatly raised forehead and a smooth, elegant nose. And dainty lips tinged with red.
There was a girl standing somewhere between a child and a woman.
Medeia mechanically lowered her head to look at her arm.
‘Here, there should be scars left by the Demon Beast…….’
The countless wounds she had sustained in the expedition were gone without a trace. There wasn’t even a scar; her white, smooth skin gleamed.
‘Is hell this vivid? It can’t be that I’ve become younger again.’
The past. Her body stiffened at the sudden thought.
“Peleus?”
“Pardon?”
“Is he alive?”
Peleus, Medeia’s brother and the King of Baldina, had died because of her.
Because she had stolen the Philosopher's Stone, and Baldina’s barrier had collapsed.
A swarm of Demon Beasts, as black as night, had swept across the entire country.
Her brother had died while holding back the onrushing Demon Beasts.
It was when Medeia was in the Empire, in the midst of a battle for the throne for her husband.
Only then did Medeia realize what the role of the Philosopher's Stone was. Why the Demon Beasts that had been swarming the continent had never been able to cross Baldina’s borders.
“What are you saying? Of course, he is alive.”
At the Maid’s words, Medeia shot up.
“Where is he?”
She had to see Peleus.
Not the corpse that had been torn apart by Demon Beasts, with only half of it remaining, but him, fully alive.
“Dea, don’t even think about coming back. Baldina is no longer a land of protection.”
“I don’t resent you. Live. That’s all that matters.”
Her only family, who had worried about his inept younger sister until the very end.
“Where are you going? How can you see someone who is on the battlefield?”
The Maid grabbed Medeia, who suddenly got up and staggered.
“Battlefield?”
“Don’t you even remember that? You hit your head when you fell off your horse…….”
“So the war is still going on. The conquest hasn’t ended yet? He’s still alive.”
The disjointed questions sounded more like a soliloquy than an inquiry. The Maid shook her head.
“This won’t do. I’ll call the Court Physician.”
It was when the Maid sighed.
“No, I have to see it with my own eyes.”
Medeia jumped up from her seat and ran out.
“Your Highness! Where are you going!”
The Maid hurriedly chased after her, but only the empty corridor greeted her.
“This is a disaster!”
The Maid, her face pale, rushed out.
\ \ \
The basement of Baldina Royal Palace.
The fire was lit in a secret place allowed only to a select few of the bloodline.
Medeia, who had descended to the very bottom of the spiraling staircase, pushed the stone wall with all her might.
The door opened as the cold air stung the tip of her nose.
The altar in the center brightly illuminated the area. No, in fact, it was the light pouring out of the national treasure placed on the altar.
“It’s still…… here.”
The national treasure that protects the territory of Baldina, the Philosopher's Stone.
The cold chill of the raw stone was felt directly in her trembling fingertips.
Medeia buried her face in it. Clear tears streamed down her face along the smooth surface.
“I need the Sage's Eye. My uncle said he would keep his promise if I brought it to him. He said he would hand over the throne.”
Iason had asked Peleus, the King of Baldina, for the Sage's Eye, but was flatly refused.
But Iason eventually got it.
Because Medeia, the king’s sister, loved him.
“Help me, Medeia. I am the rightful heir to the Kazen Imperial Family.”
“If I become Emperor, you will stand by my side, and our child will rule the Empire. Medeia, surely you don’t want our child to grow up without the shadow of parents, like you?”
“I love you, Medeia.”
Blind affection and.
“Sister Medeia, His Highness the Grand Duke is in so much pain. If only we had the Philosopher's Stone, he would be complete.”
“The Philosopher's Stone is just a national treasure in name only. We can just return it later. We’re only borrowing it for a while. If the relationship between the two countries improves, Peleus will understand you later.”
“We’re all saying this for your sake.She was swayed by the sweet coaxing.
Looking back, the prelude to the tragedy began then.
In her past life, the Philosopher's Stone, stolen by the young and ignorant Medeia, was torn to pieces and buried in the barriers of the Kazen border.
‘The Emperor hastily destroyed it, afraid that I would ask for it back.’
Medeia gritted her teeth.
“I’ve…… returned.”
The national treasure was in front of her eyes in such perfect condition, how could she not believe it?
That God had granted her last wish!
“Ahahaha! Ahahaha!”
A burst of mad laughter erupted.
“Ancestors of Baldina, gods and spirits who protect this land.”
She bent down and kissed the foot of the altar. The subtle light emanating from the Philosopher's Stone enveloped Medeia.
“I will never, ever act foolishly again.”
I will not miss this opportunity you have given me.
Medeia raised her head.
Her clear eyes, set in a pale complexion, flashed a fierce blue.
“Claudio.”
All the glory that had been given to her uncle’s family would lose its luster.
“Iason.”
The brilliant crown that Iason had desired would be taken away.
“I’ve returned.”
The prophecy of a life returned ominously shone.
\ \ \
Medeia emerged from the dark underground passage. The tears had long since dried up.
‘The Maid from earlier said I fell off my horse.’
Even in her distant memories, there were still vivid moments. Especially the memories that were only scars that made her life more painful.
Cursed Princess. Half-blood. A child who brings misfortune.
All were modifiers that followed Medeia.
Baldina’s Late King had met and fallen in love with a wandering dancer during the war, and made her his Queen.
There was much talk about her origins, but no one dared to be jealous of the Queen.
Because he loved his wife so much that he would even go to the battlefield with her.
His son, Peleus, also roamed the battlefield following his parents, but his daughter, Medeia, remained in the Royal Palace because she was too young and it was too dangerous.
<I miss you so much. Please come see me.>
On Medeia’s seventh birthday, she couldn’t bear it any longer and wrote a letter.
For their beloved youngest daughter, the Late King and Queen answered without hesitation that they would come to see her.
However, enemies who had been poisoned by successive defeats ambushed their return.
In the end, all that reached the land of Baldina were the cold coffins of the couple.
The kingdom fell into chaos.
When it became known that the King had died on his way to see his young daughter, people blamed Medeia as the starting point of the tragedy.
“It’s all your fault! If you hadn’t called for him! You killed my son!”
At the King’s funeral, the Queen Dowager grabbed her young granddaughter instead of her eldest son’s coffin and screamed before fainting.
Peleus also went straight back to the front lines as soon as he inherited the throne. To fix the army that was losing its leader and collapsing, even though he was a boy who had not yet come of age.
In that chaotic process, the young Medeia was left alone.
The Queen Dowager hated her granddaughter, her brother was always on the battlefield, and there were no relatives on her mother’s side to protect her.
It was her uncle, the Regent Duke, and his family who reached out to her as she floundered in loneliness.
To the Princess in name only, they were sweet and kind.
Medeia became their puppet, moving as they told her to, as they wanted her to.
Without knowing that her uncle’s strengthened power was aiming for her brother.
‘How foolish I was.’
Kind lies and clever schemes.
Medeia saw neither the truth nor the sincerity.
“Mom, Dad, did everyone leave me because of me?”
The image of her young self, overwhelmed with loneliness and guilt, crying alone, seemed to overlap with the desolate Royal Palace corridor.
But it’s different from then.
Medeia was a schemer who had gone through arduous expeditions and the Empire’s battle for the throne, and made Iason Emperor.
So she could grasp the whole picture of the scheme her uncle’s family had set up at a glance.
‘I went to a tea party around the age of seventeen and fell off my horse.’
A tea party and a fall from a horse.
Two events that couldn’t be more mismatched happened that day.
If the Maid Neril hadn’t thrown herself to save her, she would have broken her neck and died.
‘But after that, Neril left the palace.’
When she woke up, she was already gone.
“I thought I would die first serving a fallen royal, so I left.”
“Neril said she would never come back. She said that no matter where she went, it wouldn’t be as shabby as here.”
Feeling betrayed, Medeia forgot about Neril after that.
But now, her reason was telling her that this was not just that.
‘She wasn’t the type to leave without a word.’
Now that she had obtained a second chance and returned to the past, the first thing Medeia had to do was to build a solid sanctuary.
She couldn’t fight alone in this palace surrounded by enemies on all sides.
‘If Neril was by my side.’
If there was even one person who she could entrust her back to, someone who would be completely loyal to her, her past life wouldn’t have been so difficult.
“Did you hear? Zena is tormenting a Maid from the Royal Palace right now.”
At that moment, a group of maids passed by the corridor. Medeia quickly hid herself.
“Do you know who it is? It’s her! That weirdo who gave up her Knight Title and entered the Royal Palace on her own.”
“Oh my god, it’s her? What did she do wrong? Still, she was the only one who worked properly there.”
“She was originally upright, so she was already out of favor with the Head Maid. She was waiting for her to get caught, and it seems like she’s planning to get rid of her completely this time, using the excuse that Princess fell off her horse. She’s making Zena punish her.”
“What? That doesn’t make sense. She saved Her Highness, didn’t she? Everyone saw it.”
“If the Head Maid says so, then that’s how it is. If she says it’s a nose ring, then it’s a nose ring. Who among the people working in the palace right now can go against that woman’s mood, huh, Your Highness?”
The maids were horrified by the figure suddenly blocking their path.
“Where is that place?”
Medeia’s voice fell into the cold corridor.
